Material Security CEO: How To Find Your Ideal Customer

In this episode of the a16z podcast, Martin Casado interviews Abhishek Agrawal, co-founder and CEO of Material Security, about identifying and refining an ideal customer profile (ICP). Agrawal shares his experiences at Material Security, including the challenges of early success in a frothy market, the importance of aligning the entire company around a well-defined ICP, and how a tighter market forced them to focus on efficiency and target the right customers. He emphasizes that defining an ICP is not just a marketing exercise but a crucial step in company building, influencing everything from product roadmap to company culture, and advises founders to avoid premature ICP definition, instead focusing on gathering market data first.